"So, you wanna train with them?" in a faculty training ground, a sorceress wearing a green robe and had rapier whose blade was made of some kind of translucent material asked Caroline and Jason: "Because you are in the same study group with Aimee and Thomas, and you were challenged to a student duel with them?"
"Pretty much, yeah." Caroline nodded: "Can we join?"
"I don't know, can you?" Glenda Grimes smiled and drew her rapier and pointed at the ground in front of her: "I know Josephine recommended you, but I know your master. So I am curious, are you up to the challenge? Thomas and Aimee never trained before, so however they do in the duel or if they do not take part in the duel at all, any reasonable people would have nothing to say about that. But you are actually trained, and having you in the team will mess up the optics, so I need to make sure you are at least able to hold your own."
"Yeah, Glenda, you don't HAVE to spell it out..." Thomas gently rubbed his temples and said.
"Well, let's try." Caroline chuckled and took off her leather leather jacket, after she took out a red crystal ball from her jacket pocket.
"And Jason, you as well." Glenda smiled and pointed her rapier at Jason: "I'll evaluate your skills individually and collectively - they demanded a group fight, after all."
"Okay. " Jason took out a silver ball that seemed to be made of some kind of shiny metal from his jacket.
Caroline clenched the crystal ball in her hand, the crystal ball glowed and turned to two fireballs in the air, and before Aimee and Thomas could tell what was going on, the two fireballs turned into a translucent shield, and a translucent red one hand axe. Jason's silver metal ball expanded in one direction, and turned into a spear that was shaped kind of like a giant pen.
Caroline and Jason walked onto the training ground to stand before Glenda, with their weapons in position and Xuanli flowing in their meridians. The visuals around Caroline's body started getting twisted like that around a hot burning fire. The air around Jason's body seemed to be sprinkled with very small grains of flickering silver particles.
"Good, good. You definitely don't look like you weren't born in our world." Glend pointed her rapier forward and gently leaned forward to get into a battle pose: "Come on, ready when you are."
"Okay. Here we go." Caroline twirled her single handed axe, then swiftly swung her single handed axe at Glenda.
Fire emerged from the single handed axe and made it look like the axe grew twice in size, and Glenda's response was a swift parry using her rapier. Strong and swift Caroline's attack was, it was not able to break the light green bubble around Glenda's rapier and the attack was parried to the side. Jason unleashed his attack the moment Glenda moved, with three quick jabs, three silver shadows of the tip of his spear shot at Glenda in quick succession. Glenda raised her left hand, a light green dome-shaped elastic energy shield appeared and bounced the shadows to the side.
Caroline retrieved her axe, and at the same time swung her shield at Glenda, and before the hit actually connected, two shadows of her shield made of fire appeared on both sides of her actual shield and crashed against Glenda at the same time.
All three shields were blocked by Glenda's rapier, the strong force of the attack forced her to back off a few steps. And at this time, Jason already floated in the air and wrote two silver Mandarin characters in the air: "Sword" and "Rain". And with a horizontal slash across these two characters, silver energy exploded in midair, hundreds of shadows of swords shot from the explosion at Glenda. Some of the swords flew in curved trajectories while spinning, and some of the swords flew in straight trajectories with their sharp tips pointing at Glenda.
While Glenda conjured a whole body green energy shield to defend herself against the barrage of flying swords, Caroline hopped back to stay away from the attack of these silver energy swords. And with a short charge, she unleashed a horizontal energy slash at Glenda.
Before the energy slash could hit Glenda, Glenda let out a loud roar, her rapier pointed forward, and a shining green shadow of a falcon struck forward, destroying all the silver energy swords and Caroline's energy slash along the way the exploded midway. The shockwave from the exposed threw both Caroline and Jason in the air and against the protective energy walls behind them.
"Stop, stop!" seeing that Caroline and Jason still wanted to get up and fight, Glenda raised her voice and called the sparring to a stop: "That's good enough."
"Holy crap. Can we fight like that if we try really hard this week?" Thomas asked Glenda while laughing.
"I can train you enough so that you don't lose too badly against that." Glenda needed some time to smooth her breaths, "And yeah, I think they'd do very well as your spar partners. They can definitely hold their own against magic wielders - don't get cocky there Caroline and Jason, when you're facing students of Dorothea Clarkson, it's best not to underestimate what they can do and the number of tricks up their sleeves."
"Understood. Thank you Ms. Grimes." Caroline stopped her confident laugh and nodded.
"So, about the duel. " Aimee asked: "How should we train for it?"
"Well, you only have one week, and they have at least years of official training. So, you cannot win by normal means. And the only way for you to win is to strike them with surprise." Glenda sighed: "So tell me now, what are some combat relative skills you think that are of worth to you in a fight like we just had?"
"Um… my first thought was having a gun would be useful." Thomas said: "I'm quite good with guns, many kinds of them."
"Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. You can use guns!" Jason clapped his hands: "Have you brought your guns here?"
"No… we handed our department issued guns back when we resigned." Aimee sighed: "And our personal ones were locked in our safes, at home."
"Jason, how long can your constructs last?" Caroline scratched her lower jaw and asked.